After the minimalism of last week, there had to be a payoff, and this page is as close as I’m currently able to get to a “tour de force.” For people with very sharp eyes, you may notice a slightly different style to the linework here – I actually scanned and enanced the pencil lines rather than doing a full inked drawing.
It gave the scene a subtly grittier look that suited it, and, though I’m still developing my personal angle on the technique, I think it worked out pretty well. There’s something about the pencil work that has consistently been more satisfying to me than the inks I’d been using up to now, and I want to explore pure pencil further. So I will. And the aftermath of the bomb gave me a good place to make the switch without it being to jarring. Frankly, at this scale, the difference is barely perceptible.
Beyond that, there’s not much to report. This was an exceptionally busy week, with the travel to and from the West, and then the drawing and such. I’m bound to thank everyone for the outpouring of comments last week – they were all great, and a lot of them had points that were extremely helpful. You might notice, for example, the redesigned helmets for the UNA armored infantry. I retconned that in on the advice of a reader. And also that I’ve officially blown off Mike’s lasers (the last bits are flying off in the breeze here), which were causing too much trouble plotwise. I won’t tell if you don’t.
On the subject of conventions, I have to announce that, after some correspondence with Knowledgeable People on the inside, my decision to attend the New York Comic Con is currently on hold. There are a number of concerns in play here and I’m not willing to say I will not go, but the decision needs reassessment. So more word on than when the time comes.
However, as Chapter 1 comes to a close (next week, in fact!) the prospect of cool 6-Commando stuff is back on the front burner. What KIND of stuff, you may ask? Well, so far, we’re looking at T-shirts, caps, decals and possibly a messenger bag, for starters. And also some as-yet super-secret but exceptionally cool things that I can almost guarantee you will not expect. And some others that you MIGHT expect but didn’t really believe would come to pass! So stay tuned on THAT front!
So, as a co-worker of mine says, “Here go de nex’ one.” Sometime early in the week I’ll switch up the voting incentives with some other little goody to see from the next chapter. And as ever, keep voting, commenting, critiquing, nitpicking – I love it! And also one last note: 6-Commando has been appearing in the forums of the Gamer world lately – more proof of the comic’s status as a renegade underground… whatever. So to you who have been going to the trouble of spreading the word on 6-Commando, thank you very much!
Keep on rollin’, folks!
–M
YEAH!
Awesome page, great action! This is exactly the kind of page that needs to follow the previous one. Great “tour the force”!
I’ve seen the sketch of Major Sarah, which gave a somewhat positive outcome of this whole thing. But after seeing this I’m not so sure off that, she seems to be pretty close to point of impact.
Yeah, she and her Russian opponent are rather closer than I’d say is “comfortable.”
Funny thing about your comment on colors on the last page – it was spot on. I did exactly the thing you predicted! You seem to be anticipating my moves with this comic. You’d be a killer opponent in chess!
–M
I thin its a very good sign that she is currently struggling to stand upright, not struggling to deal with the sudden flash boiling of one side of her body. Radiation sickness could be a problem, but she is still standing by the time the ground blastwave formed and hit her, so I’m guessing the X-rays and such didn’t kill her.
A few critiques:
1) What is happening to the front wheel of the truck in panel two? It looks bent down at an odd angle. I would have to guess that it was bent during the chase, since there is no way a blast would do that before either completely flipping the truck (compare surface area of wheel and truck) or throwing Sarah or the Russkie through the air.
2) I have a hard time believing that Mike’s plates are attached that weakly. Seems like that one on the bottom right is peeling off especially quickly. That’s not my main complaint. He is leaning to the right quite a bit; it looks like he is leaning more than his suspension would allow in order to keep both tracks on the ground. In other words, it looks like the blast is getting under his hull and that he is about to overturn. If that is what’s going to happen, no biggie; if not, then you may want to make the angle less exaggerated in future scenes like this.
3) Bottom panel. Rucker is looking straight at the blast without even squinting, while one of the dudes in the powered armor (with a presumably darkened visor) has to shield his eyes. The shadows are in stark relief, so I am assuming that the blast is quite bright, and the armor might dim automatically, so why doesn’t it seem too bright to anybody without armor?
Great page, as usual, but not fully believable, imho.
All excellent points. I have to say, though, when it comes down to whether something is “real” or whether it suits the story, I err on the side of the story. When you write science fiction, you have to take some liberties from time to time. Even Kim Stanley Robinson does. I have considered the things you bring up, though, and so:
1) The truck is just being wrenched off the ground by the pressure wave – I imagined that the wheel was being torn off its bushings. The shock has likey snapped the axle as well.
2) Mike is close to the hypocenter of an atomic critical mass – he isn’t being torn apart, he’s being simultaneously crushed and melted. Even Mike will lose a few armored panels under those circumstances. To accentuate this, I exaggerated the angle at which he is resting, lifting his treads slightly off the ground and tilting him away from the blast center. I also imagined that slightly rippling his apprearance would speak to the incredible temperatures he’s being exposed to.
3) The main flash of an atomic bomb lasts only a few seconds. The panels are not simultaneous, they are progressive. By the time the last drafts of the shockwave reach Rucker and party, they’re able to look back at the event. I hadn’t thought of Captain Santelli as shielding his eyes, exactly – I had imagined it more as a flinch or instinctive reflex, which I thought was kind of amusing for a guy in a suit of powered armor to do.
And finally, let me say that I DO appreciate the nitpicking (for lack of a better term) since it keeps me on my toes. But I just HAVE to say that it is amusing that what you find unrealistic is the atomic bomb, not the 500-ton robotic superheavy tank. Have you noticed that nobody has any problems with Mike? Everyone accepts him at face value! I take that as the biggest success – that people are willing to accept him as a character in that way.
Thanks for the detailed posts! They’ve been really great!
–M
I love how the color slowly comes back into the shots. It’s stuff like this and the last page that really catch my attention when being bombarded with images all over the net. It takes some guts to just have a blank page but it context, it’s soooo worth it! Keep it up man.
Thanks, Jason! The real problem with long-form comics online is that you kind of have to set your teeth and hope that they read better retroactively, even though any given page, in isolation, may be hard to “get.” Like you, I’ve conceptualized this project as a book pretty much from the start, so the real effect isn’t likely to be completely aparrent until each chapter is complete.
By the way, the pure pencil (or crayon-brut, as I like to call it) is working out fairly well so far. It definitely has its own set of complications but it’s a lot subtler than ink, and a lot more versatile. So thanks for all the advice on that!
–M
Glad the pencil technique is working out. Looking forward to seeing some pages after you finish them.
Heh, more than a few folks are going to be cursing in their native tongue’s at the lack of sight in a few panels. And hearing the one above, about the panels (It does seem somewhat off, but.). With the panel before being a neutron based munition (if what i saw on the previous page was right) and the heat that one would produce, I’d guess, it actually melted the armor moorings, with the the compressive force to send the whole panels apart, which absorbed enough heat to keep from cooking the people inside. Likely requiring a redesign to counter this kind of weapon given the amazing performance against thermobaric weaponry already sustained. That is the only answer i can figure as it does look like they are flying off, but, that seems as good a reason as any to why they are from my viewpoint. (and likely not to right, as im very bad with the math about energy conversions.)
Actually, it’s not a neutron weapon, it’s a “neutron-source gun” bomb, like Little Boy, the bomb that the United States used to destroy the city of Hiroshima. Basically, it works by having two bits of fissile material held at a distance from each other, and when the fuse goes off, a little explosion sends one of them shooting into the other, and together they go supercritical and blow up with enormous force. The advantage (such as it is) of a gun-type bomb is that its yield can be adjusted more easily, since the two pieces of nuclear material can be sized differently so long as they are properly matched to create a critical mass. Implosion bombs are more sophisticated and harder to adjust since they need a series of carefully-constructed lenses to focus the blast used to crush the bomb into a critical mass. On the other hand, gun-type bombs are a lot more dangerous, since, if the two parts accidentally touch, they’ll start fissioning and produce a burst of ionizing radiation that can kill anyone nearby, and lead to a meltdown.
And as I mentioned above, Mike is basically being simutaneously superheated and crushed, so no matter how well made he is, he’s going to get pretty badly beat up – at best. The most intense thermobaric weapons are still a far cry from atomic bombs. Some come close, but nuclear weapons are just a whole different ball game, and I wanted to really make sure the point came across. In this world, this is the first time anyone has fired an atomic bomb in anger – there was no Second World War, and Japan was never attacked with atomic bombs, so these people are experiencing the first combat use of atomic weapons in their history. They’ve supposedly been trained for this, but I tried to make their expressions say it all.
–M
I must say, I still have a hard time imagining what could do that to the truck and leave the two people outside unharmed. The surface area of the wheel isn’t that much larger than a person. It therefore stands to reason that the wheel is only undergoing several times the force that the people are. In other words, since the two people are still standing, the wheel couldn’t have endured that much force and is still shearing off.
The wheel is the main thing I really don’t buy. The explanation for Mike was fine, completely plausible. The people, the shading gives the impression that they are staring into a bright light, and even if it was just the shockwave remnants I would still expect some squinting(lot of small debris(blades of grass, etc.) flying through the air). The wheel is the part that gets me though. A minor part, nonetheless.
Also, not that much unrealistic about mike. Ok, he managed to sneak up on the Russians without getting caught, while Sarah Bronnford couldn’t do that, but maybe he is just really sneaky. Ground pressure would be a problem, but his tracks are very large. I really have no major issues with him.
Well, man, the technical points are well taken. All I can say is that I’ll note them in my log for future reference, and thanks for pointing them out!
–M
Heh, it looks like the third super soldier is giving a thumbs down to the bomb.
Well, wouldn’t YOU? I mean, once you got through wetting yourself? Because I would. Wet myself, that is. Then give the A-Bomb the thumbs down.
Atom Bomb? So weak! SOOOOO weak!
–M
Mike is gonna be SO pissed if he survive this. :XD
Don’t piss off the guy who’s atomic powered. And weighs a half-kiloton.
–M
Wow!! Your last two episodes are really amazing. Taken together they are just fantastic. Keep it up!!!
Thanks, man! I was really pleased with the progression of action, myself, and I’m glad it had the right effect on the readers!
–M
I can just *see* the “WTF” eyes on Mike. XD
Please, let Mike and the guy shouting “Oh my god!” live! They’re my faves. 😀
And now, for the consoquences of these actions…
Well, I won’t lie, I’m not shy about letting bad things happen to these characters. The story is kind of taking on a life of its own at this point. But Mike is a tough customer – I wouldn’t bet against him JUST yet.
–M
I think Mike and Rucker are also my favorite. They are the most relatable characters, imo. Mike is the stubborn, not-too-bright, kinda naive but very well meaning all around good guy who has bad stuff happen to him, falls into obvious traps, makes goofs, etc., but who comes out ahead in the end. Rucker is his friend who can see it all happening and who tries to talk Mike out of doing that stupid stuff but who just can’t stop him from making all these silly mistakes.
If this were real life Mike would be a big lovable hunk. If this were a sitcom Rucker would be his friend, and would also be a girl, but would not be used for sex-appeal (dressed modestly, not super-hot, etc.). He would probably also live in the same apartment as Mike.
Also, it does help that they both have big strong tanks surrounding the soft gooey interior (Mike does have an organic component to his CPU, right?). It practically takes more effort to kill them than to leave them alive. Would have to set up an elaborate trap and spend a full chapter trying to kill either of them.
Ah yes, Mike’s “creamy middle,” as it were. Actually, he’s not strictly speaking “organic.” His designers used the term “wetware” to distinguish his brain from previous versions. Basically, he has a little cubical case at his center that contains a mass of a kind of silicon gelatin-foam, based on a synthetic protein called “2-4-8 desoxypolytransisterase,” made up of self-structuring chemicals that simulate amino acids. Mike’s wetware can be sequentially polarized at the molecular level. This replaces transistors and allows a far greater density of information to be carried, while at the same time greatly increasing his resistance to electromagnetic pulse.
It’s worth noting that it hasn’t occurred to anyone that this kind of technology has anything other than a military application – it’s a top military secret, and most of the civilian world uses computers that are closer in speed and efficiency to the 386-series processors. The majority of military computers (like those in CP Alpha and on board their tanks) are on a par with modern desktop systems. Variations of the wetware system are used in infantry battle suits, but only to control servos and artificial muscle groups – they aren’t adaptive or heuristic like Rumblers, obviously. Nobody ever thought of a civilian “internet.” The closest thing they have is a military information network used by the UNA countries called AFSCON, a portmanteau of “Allied Forces Systems Connectivity,” which they use to relay orders and force updates.
When I conceptualized the story, this was one of the things I was really interested in exploring. It’s an example my personal theory of the stratified technology that a century of warfare is likely to produce – you need long stretches of peacetime development to really see the civil benefits of military technology – fighting a war, you don’t have time for seeing to creature comforts.
–M
The armored suits … hehe … suit 1- did you guys feel something? suit 2- hey bob, did you fart? suit 3- Is that it? Where’s the screaming, crying and nashing of teeth? Conan would be so unimpressed, i give this movie a thumbs down.
Typical grunt chat over the commo lol.
I like to think that they’re just thanking God that the bio-functions in their suits are working.
–M